


Better Off Dead

by Piccolo_is_green



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: F/M, Swearing/cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 08:04:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16280750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piccolo_is_green/pseuds/Piccolo_is_green
Summary: While purging planets, Vegeta starts seeing things, and begins to wonder if he is losing his mind. One shot, AU, bit of a crack fic.Written for the mature BVDN 12/10/2018, using 4 out of 5 prompts.The fifth prompt is a bonus, stand-alone drabble that I have included as the second chapter to this story.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this today for the mature BVDN run by The Prince and The Heiress. Sadly, there's not really anything mature in this (hence the teen rating), as the smut plot bunnies did not grace me today. I did manage to string together what is probably the strangest one shot I have ever written. If this is the only piece of writing from me that you have read, please try at least one more work of mine (I have more on fanfiction.net) as this is a bit... odd. 
> 
> Also - I have to admit I broke the rules and made the final drabble in the one shot longer than the 400 max. Sorry!
> 
> I've also included a bonus chapter - the other drabble that I wrote for prompt 3.
> 
> Enjoy.
> 
> \- Pic

****

 

**Prompt 4**

 

At first Vegeta thought he was hallucinating. He’d been without food for three days when she first appeared. He’d hallucinated before, when water had been scarce, and his body had been drained from a purge. He ignored her and the strange device she held, and kept up his steady pace back to his pod, trudging one foot in front of the other, leaving a trail of blood behind him. He couldn’t fly. If he tried, he’d die before he got there.

 

When he reached his pod, she disappeared.

. . .

 

She had blue hair that looked green in some lights, and bright blue eyes. She sat next to him in the mess hall, watching him silently, balancing weights on her metallic scales. Raditz and Nappa couldn’t see her. No one else could see her. He caught her eye, and she gave him a small smile.

 

Frieza had finally broken him. He was going fucking insane.

. . .

She was there more often than not. She followed him down the halls of the ship, sat at the edge of his bed when he slept, watched him while he trained. She always held her scales. She always smiled at him. She never spoke.

 

It went on for weeks, weeks and weeks and weeks while the ship travelled towards their next destination. Frieza had planned a mass purge of an 8 planet solar system – all forces were to be dispatched at once. Being an elite meant he had the privilege of remaining awake on the main ship, rather than being kept in stasis in a pod. With her following him all fucking day, he sometimes wished he was asleep for the journey.

. . .

 

Raditz punched Cui, and got a hole in the chest. Nappa got three broken ribs and a snapped arm. Vegeta used it as an excuse to put a hole in Cui’s chest, and while those three lowlifes were recovering in regen tanks, Frieza took it as an excuse to punish him.

 

She watched every minute of it, as he was strung up by ropes of ki, whipped and punched and kicked. He kept his eyes locked on her, grit his teeth, and refused to scream.

 

She adjusted her scales, shifting the weights so the balance tipped. “Scream for me!” Frieza hissed in his ear.

 

She stepped forward, reached out towards him, and –

. . .

 

**Prompt 5**

 

He woke with a gasp, and fluid stung his eyes. The world around him was green and dense, and the voices outside filtered through in an incoherent babble.

 

_ The tank _ . He was inside a regen tank. His memory returned, of Frieza’s torture, and of  _ her _ – the strange ghost or nymph or alien or angel – and the way she had knocked him out with a single touch.

 

When the fluid drained from the tank and he stepped out, she was there. For the first time, he noticed her scaled were evenly balanced.

. . .

 

They landed on the third planet from the star, a planet of blue and green. Huge bots armed with metal claws and guns – manned by Frieza’s weakest of crew – landed with them.

 

He was given this planet, along with Nappa, Raditz, Zarbon, and Cui, because they could be trusted not to destroy the landscape as they killed off the inhabitants. “Not a scratch,” Frieza had hissed. “Do not put a single scratch on the surface of that planet!”

 

All the other planets in the solar system were barely inhabited, or it was their moons that had been colonised. Frieza wanted it all cleared.

 

It was a tedious task, picking off the inhabitants one by one. She was there, watching him, and with every kill he made her scales tipped back further to how they had been before, when she first appeared.

. . .

 

When he was alone, surrounded by only charred remains, he turned towards her, sick of this illusion of his mind.

 

She was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. He noticed for the first time that she looked just like the people of this planet. Her clothes had changed. Before she had looked ethereal, with pointed ears and translucent skin, and white robes that clothes her body. Now she was dressed like them. Her ears were rounded, like them, like his, and she looked real.

 

“What are you?” he whispered.

 

“Justice,” she replied. She looked around, and then spoke once more. “You should stop this.”

 

“I’m fucking crazy, talking to a figment of my imagination,” he replied. He flew off, ignoring her cries.

. . .

 

He never saw her again. At least, not until Frieza put a hole through his chest, and told the medics to leave him there to die. As he bled out, she watched him, tears streaming down her face once more.

 

**Prompt 2**

 

He woke with a gasp, and he was staring at clouds, yellow clouds in a yellow sky all around him.  _ She _ was there, pleading with a giant who sat behind a wooden desk, holding up her scales. “Let him stay,” she was begging. “There’s still so much good in him. Don’t send him down.”

 

He was dead, he realised. What was she? Who was the giant? He looked behind him, saw a line of floating clouds, and knew immediately that they were ghosts. He looked down at his own hands, he still had them, still had his feet, his body. Was he a ghost too?

 

“He murdered ninety seven billion, three hundred and twenty nine million, six hundred and eighty four thousand, one hundred and  _ two! _ ” the giant bellowed. “And you say he is  _ good! _ I should send you both to Hell, him for murder, and you for falling in love with him!”

 

“I am not in love with him!” she cried.

 

“You are!  _ You had one job! _ ”

 

“The scales don’t lie!” she argued back, stomping her foot. She was back in the robes she wore when he first saw her, and they swirled about her as her anger grew. Vegeta blinked, noticing for the first time two yellow horns that protruded from either side of her head. Strangely enough, they didn’t look bad. “How dare you question my judgement!”

 

“How  _ dare I?! _ ” the giant bellowed. “How  _ DARE I _ ?!  _ You _ work for  _ me! _ ”

 

“I work for all of the Gods!” she yelled back, her face red now. She straightened her shoulders, and tilted her chin haughtily, and Vegeta thought he’d never seen such a beautiful creature before. He didn’t have a clue what was going on, but the fact that he was dead didn’t seem to bother him anymore.

 

“I demand an appeal,” she hissed at the giant, her eyes narrowing into a glare. “Call King Kai!”

The giant roared, banging his fist down on his wooden desk. “He murdered your own people, you stupid wench!” he bellowed. The giant stood, his chair scraping against the tiled floor, and the room shook with every step he took, until he was towering over the woman. “You will regret this,” he hissed.

 

When the giant turned and left, she looked at him, and smiled. “You’ll be going to see King Kai, I think,” she said. “He’s been looking for a warrior like you.”

 

**Prompt 1**

 

The giant was called King Yemma (he had a sign on his desk, but Vegeta hadn’t noticed it before), and Vegeta could tell he was furious when he returned. He did not look at the beautiful woman or her scales once as he spoke. “Vegeta is to be trained by King Kai. Bulma, you will escort him the entire way there.”

 

Vegeta watched the woman – Bulma – as her face transformed from elation to terror. “ _ What?! _ ” she shrieked. “ _ The whole way?! _ ”

 

Finally the giant turned to face her. “ _ Yes _ ,” he crowed. “That’s your punishment for talking back to me! Now  _ go _ , and try not to fall off!”

 

Vegeta could tell the woman wanted to say something back, but she held her tongue and flicked her hair, and beckoned towards him instead. “Come, Vegeta,” she called, and his body began to move before he’d even thought about it.

 

Vegeta followed the woman out the back of the building, and towards a causeway that looked like a snake twisting through the clouds. It even had a snake’s head, it’s gaping mouth forming the gateway. “King Yemma is such a dick,” Bulma muttered, and then yelped as lightning sprang out of the clouds and zapped her. Vegeta caught her as she fell back against him, but she recovered quickly, pushing him away and dusting away the ash from her clothes, and with each brush of her hand they looked new again.

 

“What are you?” he asked her. She’d told him once that she was justice. He did not know what that meant.

 

“I’m an angel, or a demon, or a ghost, depending on what religion or beliefs people have. Or just a figment of the imagination,” she added, and the teasing grin that she gave him made the blood boil in his veins.

 

“You could have told me,” he hissed, his anger sudden and biting.

 

“No,” she replied, as they passed through the mouth of the snake. “I couldn’t. There’s rules.”

 

“But haunting people when they’re alive is fine?” he questioned.

 

She was silent, her eyes thoughtful. “No,” she finally spoke. “You weren’t supposed to see me. It means you have a gift, like me, and once I realised that I couldn’t help but hang around. I found you fascinating. But I apologise for the intrusion.”

 

He crossed his arms with a snort. He didn’t know how to reply to that. “How long is this thing, anyway,” he gestured, changing the subject.

 

She sighed, her shoulders slumping slightly. “Longer than you think,” she said. “Try and guess.”

. . .

 

He had lost track of the days. It might have been weeks, it might have been months. “I should just throw myself off and go to Hell,” he muttered as they continued to walk.

 

She laughed. “Don’t do that Veggie,” she said, winking back at him over her shoulder, and he didn’t even bother correcting her this time. “Don’t you want to spend eternity with me?” she asked.

 

_ Only if I can fuck you _ , he thought, and she stopped so suddenly ahead of him that he bumped into her and they both almost fell off Snake Way. He only just managed to pull her back from the edge, and she landed on top of him, her cheeks red, her blue eyes wide.

 

“You can read minds, can’t you?” he asked her darkly.

 

She laughed, and then kissed him, and then gave a whole new meaning to the term  _ better off dead _ .

 

_ \- fin. _

 


	2. Oozaru

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vegeta transforms. A stand-alone drabble written for the mature BVDN.

**Prompt 3**

 

In the light of the full moon her hair looked silver, and reminded him of the scales on carp in her mother’s pond. Her pupils were dilated, her eyes wide as she craned her neck and looked up at him. He did his best to remain calm, to fight the urge to shoot a blast into the air, or growl and roar. This form was made for violence, for brutality, for animalistic tendencies. His instincts screamed at him inside his head, crawling underneath his skin. He let out a snort and shook his head, and saw her jump in response. 

 

He could smell the fear on her, but she still stepped closer to him,  _ dangerously _ close to feet that could crush her dead.  _ Do it _ , the darkest part of his mind whispered to him.  _ Squash it _ .

 

“Vegeta,” she said, and although it was no more than a whisper, the sound of her voice rang through his mind. She was pure light, and as she reached out to touch his leg, her arm pushing through layers of fur, she quashed all of those dark thoughts. He could feel his rational mind returning to him.

 

“Bulma,” he spoke, and though he tried to be quiet the sound still echoed off the walls of the building. Only then did he realise where he was, at home outside Capsule Corp., the kids still inside, asleep. He’d been on the balcony – gods, how had he ended up on the lawn?! He looked at the balcony outside their bedroom, but there was no damage to the building. Bulma, intelligent as ever, followed his gaze.

 

“When I saw you starting to transform I shoved you off,” she told him quietly. “And then I ran down here and waved my arms around and led you away from the building.”

 

He let out a growl. “I could have killed you,” he said. She grinned in response.

 

“I knew you wouldn’t,” she said. “Can you pick me up?”

 

He snorted again, but reached down and curled his hand around her body. She was so tiny, so easy to crush. “You don’t understand,” he said as he lifted her towards his face. In her eyes he saw his reflection, all red eyes and sharp teeth.

 

She only shook her head in response. “Fly me somewhere,” she demanded.

 

He did not know what had triggered his tail to grow back, but he liked the spark in his wife’s eyes, and so he snorted once more, and took to the sky.


End file.
